Archive for the ‘Republicans acting badly’ Category

With right-wing media anointing Paul Ryan the next Speaker, it falls to Paul Krugman to remind us who Paul Ryan is:

As the Paul Ryan clamor gets louder, a public service reminder: he’s a con man.

I don’t mean that I disagree with his policy ideas, although I do. I mean that his reputation as a serious thinker is based on deception, both about what he has actually proposed and how it has or hasn’t been vetted.

Take, for example, the famous “fiscally responsible” budget plan. As I explained way back when, what Ryan did was to present a sort of vague fiscal outline to the Congressional Budget Office that envisioned implausibly large cuts in spending and mysterious increases in revenue, and stipulated for the purpose of the exercise that CBO take those numbers as given.
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…as I’ve said, Ryan is to budget analysis as Carly Fiorina is to corporate leadership: he’s brilliant at self-promotion, but there’s no hint that he’s actually able to do the job.

In short, Paul Ryan is the image of the sensible conservative that the Republican Party wants to project. Behind the image, there is nothing beyond a grasping nature and a lust for power. Conservatism died long ago, and left a formaldehyde-saturated lump of meat whose face is someone, perhaps Paul Ryan.

Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat, embattled lawmakers accused of misconduct and misusing taxpayer resources to hide their extra-marital affair, are no longer representatives in the Michigan House.

Courser, R-Lapeer, resigned at 3:12 a.m. on Friday as the House prepared for a third vote on a resolution to expel him from office.

One hour later, the House voted 91-12 to expel Gamrat, R-Plainwell, making her just the fourth lawmaker ever to be removed from the Michigan Legislature by her peers.
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The House Business Office, which launched an investigation last month at the request of Speaker Kevin Cotter, R-Mt. Pleasant, had accused both Courser and Gamrat of “deceptive, deceitful, and outright dishonest conduct.”

The freshman lawmakers “abused their offices,” according to an 833-page report made public this week. They directed staff to facilitate their affair, and they also blurred lines between official and political work, a potential violation of Michigan campaign finance rules.

“These two members have obliterated public trust,” said Rep. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan… and each day that they continue here, they reduce the public’s trust in this institution.”

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Two Minnesota lawmakers Wednesday vehemently denied a Dakota County park ranger’s report that they were “making out” in a car in Eagan.

Rep. Tim Kelly of Red Wing and Rep. Tara Mack of Apple Valley drew the nuisance citations Aug. 25 from Dakota County Parks Ranger Jordan Moses, who encountered them in a parking lot at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan.

Moses told Kelly and Mark that they were double parked, because of the way their two cars were aligned. Kelly disagreed with Moses and took a photo of the cars. Moses subsequently issued them both public nuisance citations.

The public copies of those citations identify the cars involved, and the time of day, 4:30 p.m.. But they don’t include the officer’s notes. But another court document, a case register obtained by the St. Paul Pioneer Press, included a briefing notation by Ranger Moses.

“Was making out with female in car. When I approached the female’s pants were unzipped and pulled down.”
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Kelly and Mack, who are both married to other people, said the park ranger’s statement was completely false and egregious.
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In a statement issued to the media on Wednesday, Rep. Kelly said he met Rep. Mack in the Lebanon Hills Regional Park to exchange some documents related to the South Country Health Alliance, based in Owatonna.

That’s their story, and it’s sticking to them.

As Richard Thunderbay at Eschaton says, there’s a lot of information in DNA. Maybe that’s what they meant by “exchanging documents.”

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They have seceded from reality, anyway. Daniel Bice, Journal Sentinel:

To secede or not to secede.

That will be the question for Wisconsin Republicans at next month’s convention.

Earlier this month, the party’s Resolutions Committee voted in favor of a proposal that says the state party “supports legislation that upholds Wisconsin’s right, under extreme circumstances, to secede.”

A version of the so-called “state sovereignty” resolution was first OK’d last month by one of the state GOP’s eight regional caucuses as an assertion of the state’s 10th Amendment rights. The measure also calls for ending all mandates that go “beyond the scope of the constitutionally delegated powers of the federal government.”

The resolutions, Murphy [sic; probably should be Krueger] said, express the feeling of many Republicans that they’ve had “enough of big government.”

[4th Congressional district Vice Chair Michael]Murphy agreed, saying the country is in dire straits financially and the federal budget needs to be brought under control. He suggested that the resolutions are in keeping with the ideas of the founding fathers, who he asserted “seceded” from Great Britain.

“If that’s crazy talk,” Murphy said, “I would be happy to carry that as a badge of honor.”

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New Mexico, best known as the state which most Americans think is a province of Old Mexico, has produced possibly the only Republican politician capable of appealing to Hispanics: Governor Susanna Martinez, who keynoted the Mitt Romney coronation. Martinez has now made the news, and not in a good way. Andy Kroll, MoJo:

Despite numerous requests, the governor and her aides declined to comment for this piece. But previously unreleased audio recordings, text messages, and emails obtained by Mother Jones reveal a side of Martinez the public has rarely, if ever, seen. In private, Martinez can be nasty, juvenile, and vindictive. She appears ignorant about basic policy issues and has surrounded herself with a clique of advisers who are prone to a foxhole mentality.
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As district attorney, Martinez displayed the kind of hard-driving tactics that would come to define her. She was known for demanding harsh penalties, and didn’t hesitate to lock up defendants awaiting trial. (In 2012, the county said that Martinez’s office was partially responsible for an incident in which a mentally ill man named Stephen Slevin was left in solitary confinement for nearly two years without trial, and later agreed to pay a $15.5 million settlement.)
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Martinez struggled to stand out. Her fundraising was mediocre, and she lacked the wealth to self-finance like her main rival, a former Marine colonel and state party chairman named Allen Weh. Weh believed the job was his, according to an email McCleskey sent to campaign staffers, and at one point suggested Martinez was better suited for lieutenant governor. “What a narcissistic grandiose ‘tool’!” she replied.

But things began to turn around as major party figures from outside the state put their weight behind Martinez. In May 2010, Texas megadonor Bob Perry and his wife, Doylene, cut the first of several checks that would eventually total $450,000, making them her biggest individual donors by far. And then, on a Sunday morning just two weeks before the primary, Sarah Palin rolled into Albuquerque at the behest of the RGA. As “Start Me Up” pumped out of the hotel ballroom speakers, Palin walked onstage with Martinez and declared to a crowd of 1,300 screaming fans, “You have a winner right here.”
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Listening to recordings of Martinez talking with her aides is like watching an episode of HBO’s Veep, with over-the-top backroom banter full of pique, self-regard, and vindictiveness. As Martinez and her campaign staff rewatched a recent televised debate, Martinez referred to Denish, her opponent, as “that little bitch.” After Denish noted that the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce had given her an award, McCleskey snapped, “That’s why we’re not meeting with those fuckers.”

In a September 2009 email mentioning one of Martinez’s 2010 primary opponents, a former state representative named Janice Arnold-Jones, McCleskey wrote: “I FUCKING HATE THAT BITCH!” And in yet another debate prep meeting, Kennicott mocked the language skills of Ben Luján, a former state House speaker and a political icon to New Mexico Latinos: “Somebody told me he’s absolutely eloquent in Spanish, but his English? He sounds like a retard.”
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What had Yates especially concerned was the growing evidence of business as usual from a governor who’d campaigned as a good-government reformer. In late 2011, the state awarded a 25-year lease worth an estimated $1 billion to a company largely owned by a pair of major Martinez backers, the Downs at Albuquerque, to operate a racetrack and casino at the state fairgrounds. To hear critics tell it, the bidding was rigged: Martinez met with the donors privately during the campaign and again during the selection process. The governor-appointed bid committee was stacked with McCleskey allies, and leaked files show the Downs’ attorney emailing with administration staffers to secure votes on the fairgrounds commission. Andrea Goff, a former Martinez fundraiser, has said McCleskey pressured her to get her father-in-law, who served on the commission, to switch his vote. “Everything about the whole process was controlled by the governor’s office,” Charlotte Rode, a Martinez appointee to the commission, told me.

I thought the Nixon story made it clear that if you’re going to be a vindictive, grandiose psychopath, it’s wiser not to have a record of your private comments on tape. It remains to be seen whether her presidential aspirations have been dented as badly as Chris Christie’s, that other corrupt vindictive, juvenile ex-prosecutor.

I do not mean, in any way, to diminish the reporting of Kroll and Mother Jones, but it seems, from the outside, that this piece happened because someone with access to a lot of documents and recordings decided to send those documents and recordings to a venue that would make sure to post them in the most damaging and complete form possible. (The Times, for example, would’ve produced a similarly comprehensive profile with this material, but it would’ve been headlined something like “Unanswered Questions Linger Over Influence of Adviser to New Mexico Governor.”) That right there is a good indication that something is terribly wrong in the office of the governor of New Mexico: Vindictive behavior leads people to do things like leak all your shit to Mother Jones.

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This came out ten days ago, but I missed it. Fortunately, so far the “journalists” are people recognized as being flagrant partisans. But having anyone in media collaborating with politicians to message is remarkable. The involvement of Judicial Watch, a tax-exempt group, in strategy sessions, should land them in hot water with the IRS. And having the wife of a Supreme Court Justice in the middle of it is disgraceful.

Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner—has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for “a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation,” according to documents obtained by Mother Jones.

Dubbed Groundswell, this coalition convenes weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group.
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One of the influential conservatives guiding the group is Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a columnist for the Daily Caller and a tea party consultant and lobbyist. Other Groundswell members include John Bolton, the former UN ambassador; Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy; Ken Blackwell and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council; Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch; Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum; Catherine Engelbrecht and Anita MonCrief of True the Vote; Allen West, the former GOP House member; Sue Myrick, also a former House GOPer; Diana Banister of the influential Shirley and Banister PR firm; and Max Pappas, a top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
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Several conservative journalists have enthusiastically participated in Groundswell’s deliberations. In March, Mark Tapscott, the executive editor of the conservative Washington Examiner…
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At another Groundswell gathering, according to the minutes, the members decided to ask Breitbart‘s Stephen Bannon to arrange for his media organization “to get senators on the record regarding their support [or non-support]” of the filibuster that GOP Sens. Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz were threatening to mount against the gun control bill. This suggested that the Groundswellers thought they could task Breitbart News to pursue a story that would be strategically useful for the group.
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Groundswell has forged a particularly close relationship with Breitbart.

Christel DeHaan is a major GOP donor, giving $2.8M to GOPers, including $130K to Tony Bennett.
Tony Bennett was the head of Indiana schools, and is now head of Florida schools.
Christel DeHaan had a private academy, Christel House Academy in Indianapolis.
Test scores gave it a C because of bad algebra scores.
After a flurry of e-mails about how bad this would be for Christel House, the scoring system was changed.
Christel House got an A.

The one good thing is that Bennett is in Florida because he was defeated for office by teachers angered at his methods, who supported Glenda Ritz.

Maybe Bennett and Michael Berkland can get together for an alternate reality show.

According to CMPA [George Mason Univ. Center for Media in the Public Interest] President Dr Robert Lichter, “While Republicans see a credibility gap in the Obama administration, PolitiFact rates Republicans as the less credible party.”

If George Mason University and Politifact say the GOP lies three times as often as Dems, it has to be ten times:

Some critics, such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and the Columbia Journalism Review, have criticized Lichter and the CMPA for holding a conservative bias of their own or for being funded by conservative foundations.

Possibly the Republican Establishment is coming to the conclusion that they might have jumped the shark.